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Assad: I Should Have Gotten Nobel

Updated 04.20.17 3:26PM ET / Published 10.14.13 12:05PM ET

YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

This is not an Onion report. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad joked over the weekend that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a Lebanese newspaper sympathetic to his regime printed on Monday. Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that Assad said the Nobel, which went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “should have been mine.” Al-Akhbar claims Assad said in 2003 that all nations in the region should hand over their chemical weapons. OPCW is currently working to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal by mid-2014. The U.S. State Department has estimated that 1,400 people died in August in a chemical weapon attack in Syria, which has been blamed on Assad, although he has claimed innocence. So, um, Assad apparently is joking about this now?